"Contextualizing Place as Type: Creating an Auburn Typeface"

Harry Lewis

Harry Lewis is earning his degree in the Masters in Technical and Professional Communication program at Auburn University. His interests include visual rhetoric, typography, and the intersections of marketing and tech comm. Before attending Auburn, he received his BA from Saginaw Valley State University (MI). He is currently searching for jobs in marketing or UX, and enjoys dogs, hockey, and bad jokes.

Contents

Introduction

The State of Location in Composition

Typography as Rhetorical Argumentation

Typography as Expression

Design Perspective

Design Inspiration & Methodology

The Typeface & Design

Design Parameters

Conclusion

Works Cited

Typography as Rhetorical Argumentation

Trimbur, in his work Delivering the Message: Typography and the Materiality of Writing (2017), explores the unique, but perhaps unnoticed, arguments inherent in typographic design, as well as how its ability to serve as rhetorical artifact has been neglected as composition studies transitioned through the “process movement” of the 1970s. His analysis of the rhetoricity of typographic design speaks to Vandenberg and Clary-Lemon’s (2007) call for students to be cognizant of their place within academia, while also placing emphasis on how composers can view letters as more than merely marks on a page.

Much like Vandenberg and Clary-Lemon’s (2007) call to action, Trimbur (2017) pushes for “a thoroughgoing reconceptualization of the writer at work – one that locates the composer in the labor process, in relation to the available means of production” (p. 261). While Vandenberg and Clary-Lemon focused on academia’s ability to produce professional generalizers devoid of spatial identifiers in their writing as a result of persistent institutional ideals, Trimbur places emphasis on the process movement of the 1970s as a key factor in the devaluation of words on page as rhetorical artifacts.

Within composition studies, process movement-influenced pedagogy places importance on voice, cognition, and conversation, while viewing writing as an imperfect translation of thought: “an invisible process, an auditory or mental event that takes place at the point of composing, where meanings get made” (Trimbur, 2017, p. 260). Through placing emphasis on the orator as the creator of meaning through discourse, the focus on text as discursive signifier has been neglected. Therein, through the process movement’s focus on oratory and cognition as the producers of meaning, the valuation of text as producers of meaning is subsequently bastardized.

However, Trimbur argues that in contemporary society, as technological advancements have composers utilizing computers over typewriters, the materiality and rhetoricity of letterforms becomes harder to ignore. While this may sound counterintuitive at first, Trimbur calls upon Marshall McLuhan (1967), who states that society only recognizes evolving environments once significant change has occurred, much as compositional mediums have drastically transitioned in the wake of rapid technological encroachment. By recognizing how letterforms embody different personalities and serve as rhetorical artifacts, we can pull them out of process movement-pigeonholing as being imperfect abstractions of thought and speech.

The privileging of speech and cognition over written language within the process movement may stem from a hesitance to place trust within imagery, as a dependence on visuals could be seen as “immature, ephemeral, and manipulative” (Trimbur, 2017, p. 262). This devaluation of form results in a delicious display of irony, as the preservation of speech and thought requires translation into written language that subjects the previously “pure” thought forms of the philosopher into a deeply scrutinized medium perceived as being immature, manipulative, and evoking ethical concerns.

The process perception of letterforms and visualization as manipulative belies the unique rhetorical situation inherent in typographic design. This distrust which must be contested in post-process theorizing if we are to abstract ourselves from process pedagogy. Trimbur (2017) posits that “we need to recast the figure of the composer and its essayist legacy – to see writers not just as makers of meaning but as makers of the means of producing meaning out of the available resources of representation [letterforms]” (p. 262).

For a composer to locate themselves in the production of letterforms and use it as artistic exigence, they capitalize on an opportunity to synthesize the influences of their place of composition into a visual medium. Uniquely, in this design process, a typographic composer is provided the affordance to mobilize the created letterforms as meaning-making artifacts – wherein the created typeface can be used to justify design choices, with the paper or computer screen serving as the location of discourse.

Trimbur (2017) argues that not only does typography afford a rhetor the opportunity to visualize abstract thought, it’s also intrinsically connected to Cicero’s fifth canon of rhetoric: delivery. Placing typography into a rhetorical situation is one way Trimbur believes the marginalization of letterforms can be contested, while also pushing for the practice to be taught within composition classes (p. 263). Similarly, Eva Brumberger (2003; 2004) places emphasis on the persona of specific letterforms, and how their application serves as rhetorical argumentation.